House of Ravens (15 page)

It must have been nice.

For a while, they had to be respected, well
liked, because even though they might have seemed strange, the
Conrath brothers had come in and saved the economy from ruin.

Again, I put the photos away and turn to the
last envelope.

The breath catches in my throat as I pull
the photographs from the sleeve. Piercing eyes stare back. Strong,
serious brows look so concerned at me. Pursed lips that are so very
serious.

Henry Conrath, my father, stares back at me
from the pictures.

The first is one of him standing in the
foyer of this house. His hands are folded in front of him. He wears
a simple black suit. The Conrath chandelier hangs above his head,
and everything in the picture looks almost exactly the same as it
looks today. The date on the back is 1904.

Another is a photograph of Henry reading in
the library, dated from 1973. Another of him standing in the
ballroom from 1898. And half a dozen others, all around his home,
the years spread out.

Tears prick in my eyes and my heart flutters
just as my hands shake. I have only ever seen my father’s portrait
in the library. It’s impossible to have a complete picture of him
from only one image, and I know that I still do not have one, but
seeing him, in different places in his house from different angles,
I see him in a different light.

A lonely man. A man full of solitude and
longing.

A man who lost his only family.

I place my hand over my heart, feeling it
swell and cry for more.

“
Where are you?” I whisper
to myself.

I bite my lower lip, so very grateful to
have found these images. To be given this little insight.

I roll up onto my knees, and something at
the bottom of the drawer catches my attention.

Stuck between the metal plates that make up
the bottom of the drawer and the side is one last photograph. It’s
stuck with only the back showing, so I have to tug gently to free
it.

And my mind is blown when I turn it
over.

The face is certainly younger than I’ve seen
it now, though not by more than ten years or so. But the serious
eyes, they’re certainly the same.

He wears simple clothing, dated and
historical. He’s standing on the porch of the Estate, there’s no
mistaking that. Lying before the house, I can see just the
beginnings of the rows of cotton, telling me this picture was taken
before 1875 when everything fell apart.

He stands behind a camera, and it’s
instantly clear, he is the one who took all of the images I’ve just
found.

From 1852 onward.

Rath.

I’M DIZZY. MY BRAIN
IS
racing a million miles an hour, trying
to decide just what this image means. It was taken over one hundred
and sixty years ago, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that the
man in the photograph is Rath.

The only logical explanation is that Rath is
a Born. Yet he doesn’t smell like us. I’ve never seen him drink
blood. Never seen his eyes flare red in hunger or anger. And
looking at the image again, he does indeed look younger than he
looks now. Not a lot, but certainly younger.

“
Alivia, are you alright?”
Nial asks, causing me to jump, hard.

I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone.

“
Fine,” I say, quickly
tucking the photograph of Rath into my shirt. I place the pictures
of Henry back into the envelope and slide them into my back pocket
before I put the rest of the photos back into the drawer, closing
it. I climb to my feet, attempting to regain my
composure.

“
You got awfully quiet,” he
says, looking at me with slight suspicion. “Did you find something
that upset you?”

I shrug, my emotions running a million miles
a minute. I’m fighting back emotions, unsure what to say, what to
reveal.

King Cyrus once told me he knew Rath’s
story, but that it was not his to share. I don’t know the full
picture yet, not even close, but just like Cyrus said, it is not my
story to share.

“
I just want some answers,”
I tell him, going with an honest reply.

“
That’s understandable,” he
says, once more returning to his investigation.

“
Have you figured anything
out yet?”

“
Well,” he says, returning
a vial to its bin. “If the Genesis vials really are an attempt to
recreate the product used to make vampires, I can only assume the
others are related. I think it’s safe to assume the BC does not
stand for Before Christ, as we are accustomed to. Perhaps it’s for
Bitten Catalyst. He could be trying to break down how the Bitten
are created, since he was researching how the Born are
created.”

“
That makes sense, I
guess.” I walk to the door and pull it open, taking out a vial of
Elle’s toxins. The ones next to a bin full of acid green vials. “Do
you know what these are?”

“
EW,” Nial says. “I haven’t
figured that one out yet.”

A little smile creeps onto my face. “Good,
because I actually know this one.” The look of surprise on Nial’s
face is apparent. “Ian’s sister, Elle Ward, has this…poison garden.
She’s brilliant when it comes to botany and chemistry. She created
this toxin that can immobilize a vampire for twelve hours. I
haven’t experienced it yet, thankfully, but plenty in the house
will attest to how painful it really is.”

“
Fascinating,” Nial says,
his eyes widening. “Is this the girl who came to see you before you
turned? The very young one?”

I nod my head. “I know, it’s incredible,
right? Ian’s sister, she’s a unique girl.”

“
So, if this is toxic to
vampires, why did your father have a supply of it here?”

“
And I need to ask Ian how
long she’s been making this stuff,” I say, replacing the vial. “He
has to have acquired it fairly recently. I mean, Elle only turned
sixteen a while back, she’s not even seventeen yet. It can’t have
been more than a year or two since she invented this
stuff.”

Nial nods. “Alivia, there is more than a
century’s worth of research in this room. While I can draw a few
quick conclusions, it may take me months to really understand what
your father was doing down here.”

I nod. “It’s a good thing that the one
guaranteed thing we have is time.”

“
ALIVIA?” THE TIMID VOICE
SAYS on the other line. “It’s Elle.”

“
Hi,” I say, surprised at
her call. I didn’t recognize the number on my cell phone. “Is
everything okay?”

It says something about the tensions around
here when that’s the first thing out of my mouth.

“
Um, not really,” she says.
“I was wondering if you could come over here? I want you to see
something.”

“
Should I get Ian?” I ask,
grabbing my purse and heading down the stairs. “He’ll be back in
just a few minutes.”

“
No!” she practically
shouts. “No, please. He’ll freak out, and we both know how he gets
sometimes.”

That’s all the explanation she needs to
give. He does have a tendency to overreact. One of those times, he
went straight to Jasmine and just hours later, he was dead. “I’ll
be there in just a few minutes.”

I grab the keys to the Porsche and open the
garage door.

It’s dark now, ten o’clock. The days are
getting longer and longer and it’s only mid May. As I drive the
roads to Lula’s house, I try to focus on what I’m doing and not let
my mind wander.

The picture of Rath is still tucked in my
shirt. I can’t decide if I want to ask Rath about it or not. I’m
dying to know the full story now, in a bad, bad way. But he also
hasn’t felt the need to tell it. Maybe it’s painful. Maybe he’s
just tried to move past it. But I still want to know.

I pull off the road and turn right to head
to the Ward property. Potholes threaten to bottom my car as it
jostles around. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been out here.
I’d forgotten how rough the road is.

Finally, I break out into the clearing. The
swampland dies away and a meadow of green grass opens up, leading
to a little yellow house, the moonlight streaming down on it. I
park on the side of the house, my eyes continuing to follow the
driveway, all the way to the little, rustic cabin at the back of
the property. The one Ian built with his own hands.

The past is past, and I can’t let myself
keep crawling back to it. So I don’t dwell. I climb out and walk to
the front door and knock.

Elle is unusually pale when she opens the
door and lets me in. “Thanks for comin’,” she says quietly as she
steps aside for me to walk through. And the scene I find is far too
familiar.

“
Oh no,” I breathe as I
take in the state of the house.

It’s all upturned again. Broken pictures,
bins dumped, doors askew.

“
They stole more toxins
again?” I ask, my eyes flicking toward Elle’s bedroom
door.

“
Yeah,” she says. I follow
her toward the back room that is hers. Her room is a mess. “I
didn’t have much in the cupboard. I haven’t had much time to make
more since they stole so much last time, and I’ve been workin’ on
other things. But I hid the rest.”

She opens the cupboard, and it’s a mess.
Cleaned out, broken glass and liquid spilling all over the wooden
shelves.

“
You split the stash?” I
ask her, helping her to set her room straight.

Elle nods. “Lula had a few hidden
compartments around the house. Not that she remembers where any of
them are anymore, but I filled two of them.”

A little light goes off in the back of my
head and I stand up a little straighter. “I was going to ask you.
How long have you been making the toxin?”

She pulls the blanket up on her bed and
replaces the pillow. “Um, it’s been just under two years now. Took
me six months before I got it just right, but the way it is now,
just under two years.”

I hold the garbage can for her so she can
sweep the broken glass off the shelves into it. “Elle, before that
break in a few months back, did any of your toxins go missing?”

She nods, carefully wiping the glass that
sticks to her hands. “Yeah, just a few vials, I think half a
dozen.”

“
How long ago?” I ask. My
heartrate picks up as I lean in closer, holding onto her every
word.

“
Hmm,” she mulls, her brow
furrowing in concentration. “Sometime during the summer. August, I
think.”

My heart races all the faster. “Was it
before or after I came to Silent Bend?”

My personal attachment to the question
finally draws her attention that there’s a reason why I’m
asking.

“
Now that you mention it, I
do remember,” she says, her eyes searching me for the reason behind
my questioning. “It was about a week before.”

“
Like right around when
Henry would have died?” The breath stills in my chest and it’s hard
to not grab her and shake the answer from this tiny
girl.

“
Yeah,” she says, growing
wary, leaning away from me as if sensing what I’m trying not to do.
“Why are you asking?”

“
Just…” But I stall. It’s a
long story, so complicated and with way too many question marks.
“Nothing. It’s hard to explain.”

She studies me, unsure. But gratefully, she
lets it go, and we finish cleaning up the mess. “Come on,” she
says, walking out of the room. “I’ll show you.”

We walk through the living room, into the
kitchen, and then to the back mudroom. Just off to the side, under
a well-worn women’s pair of boots, she wedges her fingernail into a
crack in the wooden floor and dislodges a floorboard.

It opens to reveal a small compartment,
maybe four inches wide and six inches long. And crammed inside is a
dozen vials.

“
I think you should
probably take them,” Elle says as she scoops them up and carefully
hands them to me. “Considering everything that’s going
on.”

“
Thank you,” I reply,
graciously accepting them and sliding them into my purse. “I’m sure
these are going to become incredibly useful.”

“
There’s more,” she says.
She recovers the hidey-hole and opens the back door. I follow her
around the back of the house, where the bushes are blooming with
brilliant flowers, their fragrance potent and alluring.

We turn around the side of the house, the
side where her garden grows, and where the wooden shakes line the
side of the house, she swings one aside. There lies a very similar
hole, just a few inches by a few inches. Containing another dozen
vials.